Hurricane Season Heats Up With More to Come ~

Hurricane Season Heats Up — With More to Come
~

With the Atlantic hurricane season barely half over,
2011’s weather has started to live up to the hype. But
water, not wind, has been the big villain so far — and
the worst effects have been felt not on the coast, but far
inland.
Hurricane Irene, after being downgraded to a tropical storm
as it passed on shore, delivered a heavy (and rare) dose of
flooding to upstate New York and Vermont; close behind,
Tropical Storm Lee brought record flooding to Binghamton, New
York, on the Susquehanna River. Below is an image of Hurricane
Irene approaching North Carolina, taken by the NASA/NOAA GOES
satellite, and a view of the hurricane near Long Island, New
York, taken from the International Space Station by astronaut
Ron
Garan.
Irene’s damage to coastal areas was less than
feared, and in the immediate aftermath, some commentators felt
that the media had over-hyped the danger. But a closer look
reveals that the effects of Irene were by no means trivial. On
North Carolina’s Outer Banks, for example, the
hurricane storm surge washed out NC Highway 12 in several
locations. The images below, published on PicasaWeb by North
Carolina Department of Transportation’s Lisa Schell,
show breaches in the highway that cut completely across South
Pea Island, cutting off homes from the mainland. According to
an NCDOT website, the department is working to restore the
highway by filling in breaches and placing a temporary bridge
across one gap. But work may not be completed before October
(see
“N.C.
12 Recovery Efforts”).
While heavy inland flooding dominated the national news,
coastal areas also suffered flood damage. The News-Observer
reports that one in five families in the village of Aurora
(population 583), in Beaufort County, North Carolina, is still
displaced by flooding
(“
Irene leaves Aurora sodden in mold, misery,” by
Mandy Locke). “Residents in this small community heard
talk on the national news about all the Hurricane Irene
‘hype’ and wonder why those reporters haven't
come to see them,” the paper reports. “They
heard complaints about the subway system being temporarily
suspended in New York as they stared at their waterlogged cars
in the yard. ‘It seems like Eastern North Carolina has
been forgotten,’ said Mark Harmon, police chief of
Aurora. ‘Maybe it's because we're too
poor.’”